"Dusty" wrote in message
...
You won't believe the level of spin they put on this piece.. Army Sergeant
gets screwed by X over C$ for child he didn't sire, tries to get the law
changed and the legislature says, "..they were worried that changing the
law could have unintended consequences." Oh, ceasing to screw a man over
is going to have "unintended consequences"??? Are they for real?!?

Then there's this beauty.. "We have to be very careful about fixing the
entire law because of one case," - State Sen. Tim Owens
Oh yeah, re-elect his ass right away.
------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/994731.html

Kansas bill aims to fix 'presumed father' quandary
By DAVID KLEPPER
The Star's Topeka correspondent

TOPEKA - Wife has an affair, gets pregnant and gives birth to a boy.
Husband and wife divorce. Tests show the husband isn't the father, but a
court orders him to pay child support anyway.

It is a story of what happens when the birds and the bees get entangled
with the letter of the law, and on Wednesday, it had Kansas lawmakers
scratching their heads.

Master Sgt. Christopher Sprowson is a 19-year Army veteran now on his
third tour in Iraq. His wife, Karey, and three children live near Fort
Riley, where she stays home to raise the children.

In 1995, Sprowson's first wife had an affair and got pregnant. The couple
divorced when the child was still a baby, and Sprowson has never had a
relationship with the boy. Genetic tests prove the boy, now 13, is not
his.

But a judge decided it didn't matter. According to Kansas law, a husband
is the "presumed father" of his wife's children - even if the children
were fathered by another man. Because the boy's mother could not tell the
court who the father was, the judge ruled Sprowson had to pay.

The boy's mother never sought child support and offered to forgo the
money, Karey Sprowson said. But the state required the payments because
the mother once received welfare. The state automatically seeks child
support for any parent receiving state assistance.

On Wednesday, Karey Sprowson urged legislators to change the law so that
nonbiological fathers can use genetic tests to avoid paying child support.
She said her family can't afford the more than $10,000 the court wants.

She said the state plans to garnishee her husband's Army paycheck and keep
the family's tax refund.

"It's not fair that my three children should have to suffer because of
this," she said, adding that such a remedy already was the law in such
states as Ohio, Colorado and Florida.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said they wanted to help, but
they also said they were worried that changing the law could have
unintended consequences.

The state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and the Kansas
Bar Association said many children could lose child-support payments if
the law is changed. One concern is that a stepfather could get out of
paying support after a divorce - no matter how long he had lived with his
children.

Ronald Nelson, a Johnson County lawyer who specializes in family law, told
legislators that the law recognizes that fatherhood is more than biology.
Nelson said legislation designed to help the Sprowsons would be "a broad
brushstroke that will affect hundreds, thousands of other children."

State Sen. Tim Owens, an Overland Park Republican, said the committee will
try to pass the bill without creating new problems.

"We have to be very careful about fixing the entire law because of one
case," Owens said.

So they pass a law that ends up having unintended consequences, but they
can't pass a law to fix the unintended consequences. Brilliant!

The other item in the article that stands out is the comment about
step-parents paying CS in Kansas. That needs to be fixed too. If the
step-dad doesn't adopt the step-kids he shouldn't be paying for someone
else's children. Of course, we have to overlook the unintended consequences
of men refusing to marry women with children to avoid being classified as a
step-parent.